"I hope the conquistronauts plant their flag right through my heart!" said an excited indigenous life form.

“We know your history and are very excited by the new ideas you will bring,” said N7K, a methane-breathing organism as yet undetected by humans. “We will show you how to survive in our hostile environment, but in return you must show us how to be exploited, infected, starved, segregated and, eventually, slaughtered!”

Mars, it should be noted, is considered one of the more sarcastic planets in the solar system.

“Really, I hope you’re not disappointed in us,” N7K added. “We don’t have tear ducts, so we won’t be able to cry when you force march us from our lands.”

The Mars project, run by a company called Mars One, plans to begin accepting applicants in June for a series of one-way journeys beginning in 2023. Eventually they hope the astronauts establish a settlement.

N7K said that although his species – called galldendrens — is thriving and numbers in the millions, it undoubtedly could do with some outside interference.

“I think we appreciate the resources we have, but probably you will appreciate them even more since they will be new and different and not yours,” he said. “Yes, we’ll probably go through a rough patch where you burn our homes and steal our treasure and convert us to your religion at gunpoint, but maybe in 500 years we’ll get to have a casino! That would be totally worth it.”

Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp said he was surprised to hear of the galldendrens, but doesn’t think it will impact colonization.

“Even if something is there, I don’t believe there is any intelligent life on Mars,” Lansdorp said. “There may be some primitives, but no civilization worth considering.”